


Like White Smoke

by lunarmoonchild (bobaheadshark)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Feels, Coma, F/M, Freeform, My first Drabble, Palpatine Sucks, Prompt Fic, but shoutout to pre-TROS me for trying anyways, he really does, looking back this is so purple prosey, no cookies for palpatine, spurious use of forcebond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:41:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21792412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobaheadshark/pseuds/lunarmoonchild
Summary: Grief was a palpable thing. At times, it hung in the air around Rey like a dark sheet. At others, its tendrils offered a reassuring touch for the days she felt especially unanchored, as what was left of the Resistance began to rebuild in the days after the final fall of the Sith.----Drabble based on "Force Bond" [usage spurious], the 14/12 prompt from @DenWriting.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 13
Kudos: 32





	Like White Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> Typed this in one late-night sitting. This is set post-TROS and came out a little sadder than I intended. Please excuse any typos or weird misuse/repurposing of canonverse stuff... it's my first attempt at any sort of SW fic or fanfic full stop. Comments, constructive criticism, and/or kudos are much appreciated!

* * *

Grief was a palpable thing. At times, it hung in the air around Rey like a dark sheet. At others, its tendrils offered a reassuring touch for the days she felt especially unanchored, as what was left of the Resistance began to rebuild in the days after the final fall of the Sith.

She tried to commit as much to memory from that moment as she could; as days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. The strongest sensations remained: the horrible creaking of a vast crumbling roof. Slivers of wet crimson – not hers – on her arms that no force heal could stem.

The man – Ben. Once Kylo, once Ben, now some curious mix of both, had lifted her from a sleepless reverie as she had been communing with the Sith. 

It was he who had stood in front of her and Palpatine. Exhausted, afraid, but resolved to end the sequence of cards that had been set to topple before either of them had even been born. And it was she, she'd realised with slow-brimming awareness, as the yellow fog lifted for a moment – she was the one casting the pallid blue light to strike at Ben's heart.

"This isn't you, Rey." He was close enough now to touch, but she heard it as if a whisper on the wind. The shadows in her vision were torquing horribly, the whirlwind in her mind did not abate. Her doubt made the fear louder, more forceful, Palpatine's seduction stoking her rage.

"Please." He was too depleted to return any blow, too afraid that any strike would send her further to an abyss beyond which there was no return. In the distance, she heard Palpatine's laughter.

Ben's hand touched hers.

"I love you."

Suddenly, she felt the strange sensation of a current, reversing its flow. Darkside lightning, emanating from her in waves, was now edging into Ben who was converting it to light, brilliant golden light, to strike at Palpatine. Palpatine's expression had morphed from surprise to horror, his body twisting in awful shapes with the smell of acrid, burning flesh flooding her senses.

As the Emperor's hold on her waned, as he took a final, awful fall and Rey's mind woke from its strange sunken place, she also realised that Ben was dying.

At some point, she had ended up on her knees, holding Ben as his breaths grew ragged. Desperately struggling to force heal his wounds, but knowing that whatever it had cost him to channel that final burst of energy was beyond light or dark to replenish now.

As the structure came down around her and she shielded them both from the debris, there was nothing she could do but hold him in her arms as she wept.

That was how the Resistance had found them. She, curled over him, not letting go, using everything in her power to keep him alive. His eyes were shut and his body spent, but there remained a tiny pinprick of life force in him.

And there had been nothing she could do but let Rose pry her hands away from Ben's, as the Resistance took him to the nearest ship. Thus she had explained to Poe what had happened at the Temple. That Ben had used himself to save them, and her life.

"Medically-induced coma", the med droids had told her, hours later. She took in the prognosis as she observed the tubes running from his arms, the rhythmic beeping in the room doing nothing to calm the unrest in her heart.

So days had turned into weeks and weeks into months. Touches of concern from her old friends whittled to tight smiles as she insisted on keeping a bedside vigil when not on her missions. Sadness in their eyes barely concealed as his condition hadn't improved. Quiet moments of meditation where she reached out with the force and knew he was somewhere _there_ in the vastness of all things, but Ben's mind remained resolutely elusive, at rest, asleep.

She read to him. Spoke to him of steelpeckers and rootleaf stew and BB's selenium drive improvements. Stood stoically with Leia as she also grieved. Recentred herself as she realised she'd sent scalpels and bandages flying around the room, as a Doctor had asked her, in the twenty sixth month, about palliative care.

She understood Ben was marooned in the edges of his own mind, and she held steady at its shores until he was ready to come back. 

It didn't make her grief abate, or the sense of loss less painful.

It was how she found herself under the canopy of a great wroshyr tree, in the depth of night. At the Doctor's question, a dam inside her had finally given way, and with it, an acceptance that perhaps the abyss between life and death she'd traversed during her time with the Sith was the same precipice he might be walking on now. 

Denial, anger, loss – she knew these emotions well. She'd communed with these emotions, familiar with them like she knew the layout of the Ravagers in her childhood on Jakku.

Perhaps it was time to let go.

And yet.

Something was stirring in the deep shadow of night.

A tug.

At the back of her mind, which she had not felt in over two years, almost three – since the last conversation with Kylo when he'd tried to warn her of a greater threat, a desperate appeal from him to join forces. An appeal she'd ignored, and for which she'd paid the highest price.

The realisation pulled at her as she swiped the tears from her eyes and turned away from the great tree. The sounds of the forest fell away, the axis of the world tilting in a familiar lurch.

She felt it before she heard it.

She knew it from the thrumming in her heart.

She held on to a sensation of soaring, as the bond finally, _finally_ winked itself back into existence after so long. 

It felt like sunlight breaking through a cloud. Like the first drop of rain. Like the spring of the Falcon leaping to hyperspace.

It felt like nothing like the universe's retribution. Instead, it felt like home.

"– Rey."

She turned.


End file.
